From: ant.mcwatt@ntlworld.com
Date: Sat Jul 03 2004 - 01:49:17 BST
Dear Arlo & Platt,
Thanks for your recent comments concerning the Textbook section on capitalism and socialism.
There are numerous strands in this subject and I am glad to see that Arno fleshed out a couple of areas. I think the primary consideration is to concentrate on improving the general quality of life (i.e. by employing the MOQ) rather than getting too hung up on any previous economic systems.
Anyway, to address a couple of specific points:
Arlo stated June 30th:
The problem with capitalism (in my opinion) is that it elevates "capital"
to the grandest target we struggle towards. The accumulation of wealth
becomes the noblest pursuit. Factories are closed by wealthy capitalists
seeking cheap slave labor in poorer countries oversees and across the
borders. No one questions the decisions of the capitalists to harm so many
individuals [by] seeking better profit margins and shareholder value (instead,
oddly, we blame the citizenry of those countries). We reject universal
health care in this country primarily because providing medical services to
the unemployed cuts into our personal accumulation of wealth.
Ant McWatt comments:
Many people (and especially the poor, old and infirm) couldn’t do without free universal health care in the UK. Together with the Legal Aid Board (free legal representation), free comprehensive education and social security (minimum rent and subsistence benefits for the retired, unemployed and/or sick) the idea of these institutions (introduced by the 1945-50 Labour Government) was to provide a minimum safety net for anyone finding themselves at a vulnerable point. And, of course, there’s no guarantee that
anyone won’t find themselves in a vulnerable position at some point in their lives. I’m afraid to state, that like good education, other governments are reluctant to introduce a system such as the NHS largely because of taxpayer greed and short-term political considerations. Though it has its faults (as does any human institution), it would be easier to convince me that the world was flat before convincing me that the NHS was a low quality idea. Though the UK social systems are expensive (the NHS alone cost
£65 billion in 2002-03) may I point out that the UK still retains a low tax Thatcherite tax regime (with a 40% ceiling whatever the size of your income – as comparison, George Harrison complained in “Taxman” that UK taxation was 95% at a certain level of income in 1966!) and that tax fraud and evasion alone accounts for a rather large £25-30 billion every year. There’s also a little war in the Middle East to fund which is probably hitting around a total cost to UK taxpayers of £6-7 billion by now.
Arlo stated 30th June:
In short, anything done in the name of "accumulating capital" becomes unassailable and understandable activity.
Ant McWatt comments:
Exactly, the blind accumulation of money (i.e. a social value) is given unassailable priority above all else in capitalism. Human beings are often serving the interests of the free market rather than the other way round and, it is when this happens, that the ‘free’ market can become problematic.
Arlo stated 30th June:
What I favor, and I think is supported by the MOQ, is a equitable and democratic free-market supported by a dialogue centered on "doing Good" not "accumulating wealth".
I find it heartening that Pirsig makes the statement "an employee-owned
company is more moral than a privately owned company for the same reason
that a democracy is more moral than a dictatorship".
Ant McWatt comments:
Yes, so do I.
----------------------------------------------
Robert Pirsig stated to Dr Robert Harris December 17th 1991:
‘The Metaphysics of Quality does definitely imply that, other things being
equal, an employee-owned company is more moral than a privately owned
company for the same reason that a democracy is more moral than a
dictatorship. Both enhance intellectual freedom within a traditional
static social pattern and thus are a higher form of evolution. Employee
ownership also appeals to the old Indian idea of community of equals that
allows maximum freedom for all.’
Platt stated July 1st 2004:
Just in case you're wondering, I think employee ownership of corporations is a fine idea.
Ant McWatt comments:
By the sound of it, Boy, you’ve been hanging around these gay-loving black associating commies on MOQ Discuss too long... :)
Platt stated July 1st 2004:
But, I ask myself: If such corporations are as financially successful as
companies with traditional corporate organization, why aren't
there more of them? On the list of 100 top companies by number of
employees, only Publix Supermarkets is employee-owned.
Ant McWatt comments (seriously):
I’m surprized to see even ONE. To add to Arlo’s response from today, Dr Harris mentioned to me that the gradual change over to mass employee ownership would take hundreds of years due to the vested interests (or, at least, what they think are their primary interests) of present corporate CEOs and politicians. However, as seen in Harris’s article about BP, things do at least seem to be moving in the right direction.
Platt requested July 1st 2004:
Other than the reference above, I couldn't find anything on the web (using
Google search) about Paradigm Research or Dr. Robert Harris other than
Harris has a PhD in physics. Do you have, or can you lead me to, further
information about Harris and his organization?
Could you also furnish the full text of the letter from Pirsig to Harris that you referred to?
Ant McWatt comments:
Unfortunately, most of the material I have by Dr Harris is hard copy including that 1991 letter that Pirsig sent him and very little (as you already found out) is on the Internet. However, the end of the 1991 Pirsig paragraph that I quoted states:
“Employee ownership also appeals to the old Indian idea of community of equals that allows maximum freedom for all. That tradition runs so deep in American history I’m sure Americans will buy in on employee ownership and do their best creative work for it if they understand its *really* for real and that the ownership is not just monetary but political too.”
Moreover, after some (extensive!!!) searching in my computer archives I did find a 1998 article by Harris (concerning corporate responsibility and the environment) that I paste below for your interest. It’s actually probably more readable than the BP one referred to before.
Best wishes,
Anthony.
------------------------------------------------------------
Corporate Environmental Strategy
Autumn 1998, Vol.5, No.5, pp.10-14
The Changing Roles of Executives in The Age of Environmentalism
by Dr. Robert J. Harris,
CEO & Founder, Paradigm Research International
"I never thought I would have to care so much about people and the public when I first got into this business forty years ago."
This candid statement made to me recently by the CEO of a large multi-national engineering firm captures the state of confusion felt by many executives in this "age of environmentalism." Most senior business executives today were educated in specific areas of knowledge which they were expected to apply toward solving problems and meeting the needs of the world while maximizing the financial return on investment to their companies' shareholders. They were not taught to care for the world, only to act on it as
an external object with their special knowledge, with their various technologies.
Today's business executives started their careers worrying about one "E," the economics of business. Yet, at the top of the executive ladder, we find two more "E's" on their plate - Environment and Equity. Trying to decide how the executive balances these conflicting requirements has led Paradigm Research International to formulate a new strategic framework for examining the underlying issues and forces at work. Simply put, an executive is faced with the choices of New or Old approaches to New or Old Work.
Old Work refers to industrial age concepts with an emphasis on fragmentation and a focus on "I." New Work refers to the information age concepts of wholeness and a focus on "We":
Old approaches to Work (Industrial Age Business Strategy: Defend & Extend)
Fragmentation: I own,therefore, I am.

Cognition: I think, therefore, I am.

Perception: I perceive, therefore, I am.
New approaches to Work (Information Age Business Strategy: Understand & Expand)
Partnering: We partner, therefore, we are.

Integrating: We integrate, therefore, we are.

Connecting: We connect, therefore, we are.
The impact of "environmentalism" enters by enlarging the industrial age nature of old work to the new nature of work defined by all three "E's." A key question here is: "Did environmentalism cause these changes or is it a carrier of deeper change?" My position is that environmentalism is a carrier and not the cause of these changes. As long as environmentalism is viewed as a cause, it will always be possible to find reasons to eliminate it philosophically from consideration in public and corporate debate.
Yet, if it is viewed as perhaps the most visible effect of a deeper wave of change washing through society, it will have to be accorded the most serious consideration. I see environmentalism happening because we are shifting from an "I" society to a "we" society. The evidence of this profound shift away from viewing reality as fragmented parts and toward viewing it as an integrated whole is accumulating rapidly in all areas of knowledge beyond environmental science:
Harvard psychologist, Robert Kegan shows in his book In Over Our Heads (1994) how we first learn to distinguish our baby selves from our surroundings, spending the rest of our lives integrating back to a sense of wholeness. His research shows that if contemporary culture was viewed as a school for society, at least two-thirds of us would fail to graduate.
Jeff Gates in the Ownership Solution (1998) eloquently makes the case that our traditional economic system has learned how to create capital but not capitalists, which will be needed to address the social equity issue of sustainability.
On the philosophical front, Robert Pirsig author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance(1974) and Lila (1991) laments on the tragedy of and solution to treating Value or Quality as a separate part of life rather than the essence of life.
Physicist David Deutch in Fabric of Life (1997) and Biologist Robert O. Wilson in Consilience (1998) both speak with authority on society's rapid march toward the unification of knowledge.
Stuart Kauffman's At Home in the Universe (1995) describes the search for underlying unity in all complex systems in the emerging field of complexity, named Plectics by Nobel Laureate, Murray Gell-Mann.
Math, Religion, Economics and other disciplines are making their contributions to this emerging realization of a profound shift toward a new and better way of viewing reality and our place in it. Environmentalism is just one, though perhaps the most visible and palpable arrow pointing to this new truth. New roles for new work will require new titles. For the business issue, we can already see the beginnings. Dr. Christopher Gibson-Smith, managing director of British Petroleum in London and responsible for two
and a half of BP's three "E's," introduced himself this year at the Conference Board/A.D. Little-sponsored Conference on Sustainability in New York, as BP's "Chief Non-Financial Officer." That is a clever step in the right direction. Why not go all the way and create the new corporate title of Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) for this kind of work. The role of a CSO will be to achieve the balanced integration of all three "E's" and his or her core competency will be to understand and expand rather than
defend and extend. A CSO could actually be promoted to CEO of a global corporation in this brave new world.
Answering Public Expectations
ARCO's pursuit of reformulated gasoline as a viable fuel option, Bristol-Myers Squibb's development of its Herbal Essences line, and Monsanto's bold attempt to move into industrial products that allow for sustainable development, are all examples of how organizations, and the new CEOs, must operate in an increasingly public arena. Strategic partnerships, among traditional enemies, is often the new way of environmental change.
Addressing the Weight Against Change
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, in her book The Change Masters, presents a definition of change that acknowledges the need to cultivate "innovative capacities" in firms:
"Change involves the crystallization of new action possibilities (new policies, new behaviors, new patterns, new methodologies, new products, or new market ideas) based on reconceptualized patterns in the organization. The architecture of change involves the design and construction of new patterns, or the re-conceptualization of old ones, to make new, and hopefully more productive, actions possible."
Firms require the intent, tools and personnel to change. Whether it is environmentally-related new product development; process efficiency and resource reduction; eliminating pollution, spills, and threats to the public; or improving stakeholder relations and corporate reputation on environmental issues, there is a need for whole-scale change. Filing permits for production, disclosing potential environmental hazards to the community, or seeking engineering solutions for reducing regulated pollution in the
manufacturing process, all add time and cost to the organization's product or service it delivers, not value. In organizations that have evolved the environmental management function beyond this "bag on the side of the business" view, organizational change, on a broad scale, has taken place. The process of change presents opportunities for environmental leaders.
In 1995, John Kotter wrote an article entitled "Leading Change," for the Harvard Business Review, which jumped to first among the thousands of reprints sold by HBR and led to the equally successful book of the same title.
The framework Kotter presents for affecting generic organizational change has much to offer hopeful "environmental change agents." Kotter has found that there are eight common errors and resultant tactics to effectively implementing organizational change. Mapping these eight common mis-steps to facets of corporate environmental behavior illuminates the relevance that Kotter brings to the debate.
According to Kotter, the first and biggest mistake people make when trying to change organizations is to plunge ahead without establishing a high enough sense of urgency in fellow managers and employees. In order to begin a change initiation on any scale, the change agent must avoid complacency by establishing a sense of urgency or crisis.
Corporate change is intimately linked to this concept of crisis and urgency. No corporate leader wishes to wait for its organization's own Valdez or Bhopal to trigger change. Yet, reactive environmental change is often the norm. Heightened regulations, demonstrations, consumer boycotts, negative media attention, all serve as external triggers for change. Yet, some companies have managed to avoid a real crisis by creating a sense of urgency on environmental issues. S.C. Johnsons' elimination of the use of
chlorofluoro-carbons (CFCs) serves as an example. The trick for environmental leaders is to drive this sense of urgency before it happens to the organization.
The second error gets to the core of failed environmental management initiatives in firms: failing to create a powerful guiding coalition. There is a real need for this coalition-building in order to gain access to organizational power and resources and overcome the inertia for change. As Deborah Anderson notes, the environmental vice president must be a diplomat, and obviously having a keen appreciation for coalition building is also important. Like any intended change, developing a significant power-base
throughout the upper levels of the organization on an environmental initiative is necessary. If the environmental initiative involves completely "changing course," as Stephan Schmidheiny might say, this coalition becomes crucial. Coalition-building determines the depth of influence a change initiative will have throughout the organization.
Environmental change in firms has also suffered from underestimating the power of vision, the third error. As corporate responses to environmentalism evolved, environmental professionals were led into rigidly-defined boxes. The potential "environmental change agents" in organizations, and thus organizations themselves, require the ability to break from these "boxed roles." Vision responds to crisis created or actual - that helps trigger change throughout an entire organization.
Along with a weak sense of vision, EH&S initiatives have often been stifled by a simple lack of commitment throughout the organization. Having an entire organization understand and accept a particular vision is an enormous challenge, especially when the initiative is perceived as cost-generating or peripheral at best. Changing the actions of an entire organization requires intense communication efforts – not often seen in environmental change efforts.
The historic treatment of environmental concerns by business has often created wide divisions between the environmental staff and the rest of the company. It is the challenge of the firm's environmental leader to traverse this communications gap.
With any intended change of direction in an organization a corresponding series of obstacles form quickly to block the change process. These "blockers for change" include structures (formal structures making it difficult to act), skills (a lack of needed skills undermines action), systems (personnel and information systems make it difficult to act), and superpowers (bosses discourage actions aimed at implementing the new vision). Kotter once again reflects on a number of tactics that internal "change agents"
employ to defeat this opposition:
"I could identify a number of tactics that innovators used to disarm opponents: waiting them out (when the entrepreneur had no tools with which to directly counter the opposition); wearing them down (continuing to repeat the same arguments and not giving ground); appealing to larger principles (tying the innovation to an unassailable value or person); inviting them in (finding a way that opponents could share the `spoils' of the innovation); sending emissaries to smooth the way and plead the case (picking
diplomats on the project team to periodically visit critics and present them with information); displaying support (asking sponsors for a visible demonstration of backing); reducing the stakes (de-escalating the number of losses or changes implied by the innovation); and warning the critics (letting them know they would be challenged at an important meeting-with top management, for example)."
Kotter reflects on this in more detail:
"Major change takes time, sometimes lots of time. Zealous believers will often stay the course no matter what happens. Most of the rest of us expect to see convincing evidence that all the effort is paying off. Non-believers have even higher standards of proof. They want to see clear data indicating that the changes are working and that the change process isn't absorbing so many resources in the short term as to endanger the organization."
To foil the paralysis of non-believers, any major change of environmental direction calls for generating short-term wins along the way. This is a powerful idea and tool for enacting change. Because of its often divisive, litigious history and its value-laden nature, "environmentalism" has the potential to stir the emotions of critics in the organization. One powerful means of breaking such opposition is to ensure that the change process allows for attainable goals.
"Anchoring" the Change in the Culture
The final step in the change process involves "anchoring" the change into the culture of the firm. Affecting individual behavior, values and basic assumptions, requires an enormous amount of time, resources and effort. Yet, using the corporate culture to "anchor" change allows environmental leaders to become consequential.
Firm's like S.C. Johnson reveal the strength of cultural change. When interviewing managers in the firm's polymer division on the strength of environmentalism driving product change, the lead product team manager stated that environmental issues are not unusual in the product design process as they are part of, "the environment [they] have come to expect."
"Anchoring," it seems, is the most difficult, yet most essential aspect for sustained change efforts. Throughout this entire process, effective personal skills drive the change process. The lessons presented here on personal leadership and their connection to organizational effectiveness in the face of societal pressures are by no means complete or detailed. What we assert is based on a set of snapshots of this rapid and dynamic organizational movement. Yet, one thing is clear. This new breed of corporate
environmental champions, skilled in technical competence, the craft of business success, and the art of public relations, is creating value for organizations, while moving them up the steep stairway of sustainable development.
Endnotes
1. Since 1993, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's (RPI) Environmental Management & Policy program and our journal, Corporate Environmental Strategy (CES), have hosted 70-100 environmental leaders for a two-day, informal "meeting of the minds." At this event, graduate students get the chance to interact with environmental professionals, and (CES) gets valuable advice on the state of environmental management.
2. Steve Rowe's comments were made at CES's Board and Corporate Affiliates round-up prior to the two-day event, June 15-16, 1998.
3. Stuart Hart, "Beyond Greening: Strategies for a Sustainable World," Harvard Business Review, Vol.75, No.1., 1997.
4. Scott Nadler, "The Green Stairway: Surviving and Flourishing in Environmental Management," Corporate Environmental Strategy, Vol. 5., No. 2., 1998.
5. See "Environmental Management in the 90s: A Snapshot of the Profession," A survey prepared for the National Association of Environmental Managers (NAEM) by Coopers & Lybrand, 1991; also see "Corporate Environmental Management: An Executive Survey" by Booz, Allen, & Hamilton, 1993.
6. Bill Bradley, Time Present, Time Past: A Memoir, Knopf Publishing, New York, 1996.
7. Conversation with Joel Makower at Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI) conference, March 1995.
8. Max DePree, Leadership Jazz, Currency Doubleday, New York, 1992.
9. Bruce Piasecki, Corporate Environmental Strategy: The Avalanche of Change Since Bhopal, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1995.
10. Keynote speech by Frank Friedman at RPI's Fifth Annual Corporate Affiliates event hosted by the Environmental Management & Policy Program, June 1997.
11. See Deborah Anderson, "Key Concepts in Anticipatory Issues Management," Corporate Environmental Strategy, Vol. 5., No. 1., 1997.
12. Donald Phillips, Lincoln on Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times, Warner Books, New York, 1995.
13. Michael Porter & Claas van der Linde, "Green and Competitive: Ending the Stalemate," Harvard Business Review, September-October 1995.
14. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, The Change Masters: Innovation & Entrepreneurship in the American Corporation, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1983.
15. John Kotter, Leading Change, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 1996.
16. Stephan Schmidheiny, Changing Course: A Global Business Perspective.
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